Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

In last month’s Whodunit column I made a rare exception and included a period mystery among the reviews, something I said I normally avoid. This month I may have to eat my words, reviewing not just one, but two excellent suspense novels set in the past, one in fin-de-siècle Vienna, and one in 1840s Istanbul.J. Sydney Jones breathes life into turn-of-the-century Vienna in his stylish and...

Black and white: opposing views on racial identity

Two intriguing new books one by an outspoken African-American journalist and another by an equally candid civil rights activist offer starkly different views on race relations in America. The End of Blackness by Debra Dickerson and Quitting America by Randall Robinson explore the many ways in which African-Americans have been maligned, discriminated against and mistreated. However, Dickerson...

An American Story "I wasn't worth a damn until I was thirty." Such bluntness is typical of An American Story, Debra Dickerson's inspiring new biography. The daughter of former sharecroppers, she literally started at the bottom of life and worked her way up to become the Air Force's chief of intelligence in Turkey and, later in her career, an award-winning journalist and commentator. This is a...